Austria sets heat record: national weather service
by AFP Staff Writers
Vienna (AFP) April 7, 2024

A town in southern Austria Sunday became the country's first locality to hit a temperature of 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) this early in the year, the national weather service said.

The announcement by Austria's federal Institute for Geology, Geophysics, Meteorology and Climatology came as countries around the world have seen ever more extreme weather, which experts attribute to global warming.

A measuring station in the town of Bruck an der Mur in Austria's southeastern province of Styria registered precisely 30.0 degrees Celsius, marking the Alpine nation's earliest ever recorded "heat day", the institute said in a statement.

The national weather service defines a "heat day" as mercury levels touching at least 30 Celsius. Sunday's record surpassed by ten days the previous one set 17 April 1934 in Salzburg.

Temperatures in other European countries have also been unseasonably warm since the start of April, with Crete in Greece reaching 31 degrees Celsius earlier this week.

Experts warn that global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions makes extreme weather more likely.

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